This discussion is about heritability.
Formal topic, as I was driven to sum it up eventually: People turn to genetics as an explanation for problems not proven (or even suggested by evidence) to be connected to it any more than to anything else. People do this to the extent that they ignore environmental factors, because blaming genetics for Bad Things is easier than accepting responsibility.
This is a long discussion which was originally about homosexuality and became about everything from intelligence to mental illness to gods know what. I don't expect people to read all 47 posts or whatever the hell we're at now. But, for the sake of reproducing a boiled-down version of my basic argument, I'll copy-paste my latest response.
Disclaimer! Keep in mind that at this point in the discussion we've basically moved beyond the question of whether or not we can fairly call half the topics at hand "problems," so it's more accurate to say that we're discussing behaviors and preferences overall. So, that said, I don't need to see comments telling me that homosexuality isn't a social problem, because nobody suggested we need to "solve" it in the first place.
Near as I can tell, everyone here has said more than once that genetics and environment both have an effect. Everyone here has agreed that genetic factors can influence a person's life experience. If I were born with one leg, I'd have a different experience of life than a person with two.
One place of divergence is the definition of an acquired trait, as![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
exitjmouse pointed out. For some very specific cases, I can believe that in the case of issues like mental illness genetic predispositions count for something. I only believe this because I've been shown numbers and can look at the studies to form an opinion. Only in cases where I'm shown proof do I believe it.
My default view in such cases refers back to what I originally stated, that acquired characteristics are not heritable, that anything you develop in the course of your life is strictly an acquired characteristic until someone proves me wrong, and that attempts to prove the heritability of acquired traits have been limited to agenda-driven pseudoscience.
I think the fact that I define personality traits as "acquired until proven heritable" results from a few different starting points.
I'll walk you through my logic in stages so that we can find the one causing a problem in this debate.
1) Most of the credibility of studies "proving" the heritability of acquired traits such as physical fitness or intelligence came from a eugenics fad that started in the early 1900's and lost most of its followers because of one Austrian with the balls to try it out(OMGZ, Godwin's Law?). Eugenics was more than an application of genetic knowledge. It was a way of creating knowledge and framing it to fit pre-existing notions of just what causes social inequality after all. However, because most people did not make the leap that science can be affected by cultural expectations, the "objective" studies behind the eugenics movement stuck around long after people said you can't kill people for being born inferior. Hence why The Bell Curve was used as a textbook for so long and why the US kept out immigrants for so long despite the fact that neither are backed by anything approaching decent science.
2)Because I'm willing to acknowledge that science can be affected by culture, I feel obligated to look at the cultural expectations or agendas driving particular research. That's why I look at studies of the "heritability" of homosexuality or intelligence as a holdover of ideas we've supposedly condemned.
3) Blah blah issues of discrimination based on genetics, tired topic. I won't belabor it here.
4) Combine issues one and two. Studies proving eugenics were... to be blunt, crap. If you look at the studies themselves, it's obvious to us now where the flaws in their logic were. Without putting modern scientific studies through similar examination, I'm inclined not to believe them. Hence the "acquired until proven heritable" viewpoint. I wouldn't believe any environmental correlation on face value any more than I would believe an alleged genetic one. However, environmental correlations are generally not based in notions of inherent genetic "norms" that can be used to condemn certain groups.
5) Easier to test, easier to fix? Well, it's easier to test in the sense that only one will give you numbers and charts, which are comfortingly "objective" things to see in a study. It's only easier to fix in the sense that we can develop gene therapy for simplemindedness (as it was once thought to be heritable), or get rid of problems with selective breeding programs(as one eugenics proponent put it in the twenties: "We could breed out social unfitness within three generations."). These are easier to undertake, but are much less likely to fix any problems, real or imagined.
6) Then how can we resolve inequalities in performance or ability? To fix problems, the first place we ought to turn our resources is to the surrounding environment. For example, to quote again for the sake of not plagiarizing:
In an urban slum in Guatemala, where the dirt roads are bordered by open sewers and the only nominally clean water is dispensed by one spigot per thousand inhabitants, it makes little sense to test the susceptibility of individual children to infectious organisms.
In short, turning to genetics as anything but a last resort for problems in the social, economic, cultural, or academic realm is a distraction from the obvious daily problems we ought to be solving first.
So, bringing it around onto our topic. Not only do I believe attributing anything but verifiably physical conditions to our DNA is supported by bad science, but that bad science only had credibility in the first place because it supported popular notions of who should breed and who shouldn't. Because I think those popular notions are shit, I won't use them to excuse bad science and the science itself loses the last scrap of worth it had.
Until I see scientific studies that can prove to my satisfaction that their conclusions are based on more than wishful thinking, I won't believe researchers or journalists who reassert old ideological garbage. I have seen a few that met my criteria, which is why I believe that schizophrenia probably has a strong genetic component. Studies I've read that try to prove the same thing about acquired traits like intelligence or homosexuality quite frankly are never of the same quality. When I start reading good science that has more behind it than ideology, I'll re-evaluate my standpoint.
Formal topic, as I was driven to sum it up eventually: People turn to genetics as an explanation for problems not proven (or even suggested by evidence) to be connected to it any more than to anything else. People do this to the extent that they ignore environmental factors, because blaming genetics for Bad Things is easier than accepting responsibility.
This is a long discussion which was originally about homosexuality and became about everything from intelligence to mental illness to gods know what. I don't expect people to read all 47 posts or whatever the hell we're at now. But, for the sake of reproducing a boiled-down version of my basic argument, I'll copy-paste my latest response.
Disclaimer! Keep in mind that at this point in the discussion we've basically moved beyond the question of whether or not we can fairly call half the topics at hand "problems," so it's more accurate to say that we're discussing behaviors and preferences overall. So, that said, I don't need to see comments telling me that homosexuality isn't a social problem, because nobody suggested we need to "solve" it in the first place.
Near as I can tell, everyone here has said more than once that genetics and environment both have an effect. Everyone here has agreed that genetic factors can influence a person's life experience. If I were born with one leg, I'd have a different experience of life than a person with two.
One place of divergence is the definition of an acquired trait, as
exitjmouse pointed out. For some very specific cases, I can believe that in the case of issues like mental illness genetic predispositions count for something. I only believe this because I've been shown numbers and can look at the studies to form an opinion. Only in cases where I'm shown proof do I believe it.My default view in such cases refers back to what I originally stated, that acquired characteristics are not heritable, that anything you develop in the course of your life is strictly an acquired characteristic until someone proves me wrong, and that attempts to prove the heritability of acquired traits have been limited to agenda-driven pseudoscience.
I think the fact that I define personality traits as "acquired until proven heritable" results from a few different starting points.
I'll walk you through my logic in stages so that we can find the one causing a problem in this debate.
1) Most of the credibility of studies "proving" the heritability of acquired traits such as physical fitness or intelligence came from a eugenics fad that started in the early 1900's and lost most of its followers because of one Austrian with the balls to try it out(OMGZ, Godwin's Law?). Eugenics was more than an application of genetic knowledge. It was a way of creating knowledge and framing it to fit pre-existing notions of just what causes social inequality after all. However, because most people did not make the leap that science can be affected by cultural expectations, the "objective" studies behind the eugenics movement stuck around long after people said you can't kill people for being born inferior. Hence why The Bell Curve was used as a textbook for so long and why the US kept out immigrants for so long despite the fact that neither are backed by anything approaching decent science.
2)Because I'm willing to acknowledge that science can be affected by culture, I feel obligated to look at the cultural expectations or agendas driving particular research. That's why I look at studies of the "heritability" of homosexuality or intelligence as a holdover of ideas we've supposedly condemned.
3) Blah blah issues of discrimination based on genetics, tired topic. I won't belabor it here.
4) Combine issues one and two. Studies proving eugenics were... to be blunt, crap. If you look at the studies themselves, it's obvious to us now where the flaws in their logic were. Without putting modern scientific studies through similar examination, I'm inclined not to believe them. Hence the "acquired until proven heritable" viewpoint. I wouldn't believe any environmental correlation on face value any more than I would believe an alleged genetic one. However, environmental correlations are generally not based in notions of inherent genetic "norms" that can be used to condemn certain groups.
5) Easier to test, easier to fix? Well, it's easier to test in the sense that only one will give you numbers and charts, which are comfortingly "objective" things to see in a study. It's only easier to fix in the sense that we can develop gene therapy for simplemindedness (as it was once thought to be heritable), or get rid of problems with selective breeding programs(as one eugenics proponent put it in the twenties: "We could breed out social unfitness within three generations."). These are easier to undertake, but are much less likely to fix any problems, real or imagined.
6) Then how can we resolve inequalities in performance or ability? To fix problems, the first place we ought to turn our resources is to the surrounding environment. For example, to quote again for the sake of not plagiarizing:
In an urban slum in Guatemala, where the dirt roads are bordered by open sewers and the only nominally clean water is dispensed by one spigot per thousand inhabitants, it makes little sense to test the susceptibility of individual children to infectious organisms.
In short, turning to genetics as anything but a last resort for problems in the social, economic, cultural, or academic realm is a distraction from the obvious daily problems we ought to be solving first.
So, bringing it around onto our topic. Not only do I believe attributing anything but verifiably physical conditions to our DNA is supported by bad science, but that bad science only had credibility in the first place because it supported popular notions of who should breed and who shouldn't. Because I think those popular notions are shit, I won't use them to excuse bad science and the science itself loses the last scrap of worth it had.
Until I see scientific studies that can prove to my satisfaction that their conclusions are based on more than wishful thinking, I won't believe researchers or journalists who reassert old ideological garbage. I have seen a few that met my criteria, which is why I believe that schizophrenia probably has a strong genetic component. Studies I've read that try to prove the same thing about acquired traits like intelligence or homosexuality quite frankly are never of the same quality. When I start reading good science that has more behind it than ideology, I'll re-evaluate my standpoint.
